Chapter 14
Fourteen
ZOE / VICTORIA
I lay sprawled on the library sofa where Jason had left me, every nerve ending in my body still tingling.
The afternoon sun streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, painting everything in a dreamy golden haze that matched my current mental state.
My lips felt deliciously bruised, my skin still burning everywhere he’d touched me.
Somewhere in the penthouse, I could hear Jason’s voice as he took his call—that deep, commanding tone that did absolutely unfair things to my insides. The same voice that had just promised tonight in a way that made heat pool low in my belly.
The leather was still warm from where our bodies had pressed against it. I could smell his cologne lingering in the air, that subtle, expensive scent that made me want to bury my face in his neck and?—
Reality crashed into my hormone-addled brain like a bucket of ice water.
“Oh God.” I bolted upright so fast the room spun. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”
The original plot of The CEO’s Bargain flashed through my mind with horrifying clarity.
Jason was supposed to be falling for sweet, innocent Sophia.
The elevator was supposed to be their first kiss, their magical moment of connection.
Instead, I’d gone and turned it into my own personal makeout session with the hero.
And then, because apparently I hadn’t derailed the plot enough, I’d let him carry me to the library for Kissing: The Sequel - Now With Extra Heat.
“What have I done?” I pressed my fingers to my lips, still feeling the ghost of his kiss. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. This isn’t even in the same universe as how it’s supposed to go!”
I scrambled off the sofa, nearly tripping over my own feet in my haste to escape the scene of my literary crime. My legs felt embarrassingly wobbly as I practically ran to Victoria’s bedroom—my bedroom?—and started pacing like I was training for the Anxiety Olympics.
“Get it together, Zoe,” I muttered, running my hands through my hair. “You’re supposed to be the evil wife, not the one having hot library moments with?—”
My brain helpfully replayed said hot library moment in vivid HD: Jason’s weight pressing me into the sofa, his mouth hot against my neck, the way his muscles felt under my hands, that growl he’d made when I’d wrapped my legs around his waist…
“Stop that!” I threw myself face-first onto the bed. “Bad brain! We are not thinking about Jason’s muscles or his hands or his?—”
But my traitorous mind had already skipped ahead to Chapter Twenty-Three.
The infamous first love scene between Jason and Sophia.
I’d read those pages so many times they were practically imprinted on my soul.
Now those steamy passages floated through my head, except this time, I wasn’t just reading them—I was living them.
Jason stood at the foot of the bed, moonlight caressing his naked form like an artist’s masterpiece.
The soft glow silvered the planes of his broad chest, shadows emphasizing the cut of his abs, the sharp V of his hips.
His powerful thighs and strong arms spoke of carefully maintained strength, while his impressive length stood proudly, leaving no doubt about his desire…
“Oh my God.” I rolled over and pressed a pillow over my face, but the words kept coming.
He was pure masculine perfection, like a Greek god stepped down from Olympus.
When he gripped her thighs with those strong hands, positioning himself at her entrance, she could only gasp.
His impressive size made her breath catch—she’d never seen anything quite so magnificent.
“Are you ready for me, sweetheart?” he asked, his voice rough with need as he…
“Nope!” I launched the pillow across the room like it had personally offended me. “We are absolutely not thinking about Jason’s… anything!”
Except now I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Would the real Jason look like that? The way his tailored suits fit suggested the author hadn’t been entirely fictional about those muscles.
And given how he’d felt pressed against me in the library, all hard planes and solid heat…
and that rather impressive evidence of his interest pressing against my thigh…
“This is not happening.” I resumed my pacing, probably wearing a very expensive path in the plush carpet. “I am not going to sleep with Jason Everett. I am not going to see him naked. I am not going to find out if the author was accurate about his… dimensions.”
My body, however, seemed to have very different ideas. Every inch of my skin felt hypersensitive, and my mind kept conjuring images of what tonight might entail. Would his hands feel as good on bare skin as they had through my clothes? Would he make that deep, growly sound again when?—
“Shower!” I practically sprinted for the bathroom. “Cold shower. Ice-cold. Antarctic cold. Maybe I’ll just stay in there until this whole book is over.”
I stripped off my clothes, trying very hard not to think about how Jason might do it later, and caught sight of myself—Victoria?—in the full-length mirror. I froze, momentarily distracted from my crisis by the sheer perfection staring back at me.
“Oh, come on.” I turned sideways, then frontways again.
“This is just excessive.” Perfect breasts that somehow defied gravity, flat stomach, legs that went on forever…
Even her belly button looked elegant. Who has an elegant belly button?
“I bet she’s never had an awkward naked moment in her life.
Probably came out of the womb wearing couture and perfect posture. ”
The shower did absolutely nothing to calm my nerves. If anything, the hot water just reminded me of how hot other things had gotten in the library. Every drop trailing down my skin felt like phantom touches, making me shiver despite the steam filling the bathroom.
“Focus, Zoe,” I muttered, trying to think unsexy thoughts.
“Think about… double shifts on your feet for twelve hours straight. Or that time you had to explain to a customer that no, we can’t make the sun set faster for their perfect dinner ambiance.
Or counting coins from tips at two a.m. while your feet are screaming.
Or dealing with Karen from table seven who insisted her well-done steak was too brown… ”
But my mind kept drifting back to those book passages. If the real Jason was anything like his fictional counterpart…
His kiss was demanding, claiming, as his large hands spanned her waist. “I’ve wanted you for so long,” he growled against her throat. “Every inch of you…”
“Oh God.” I pressed my forehead against the cool tile. “I’m going to die. I’m actually going to die. Cause of death: romance novel hero turned real.”
Post-shower, I faced my next crisis: what does one wear for a night of potentially mind-blowing sex with the hero you’re supposed to be villainously plotting against?
Standing in Victoria’s massive walk-in closet, I stared at drawer after drawer of lingerie.
“Something unsexy,” I decided, rifling through the drawers. “Something that says sorry about the library incident; let’s just be platonic nemeses.”
But apparently Victoria didn’t believe in unsexy underwear. Everything was lace and silk in various stages of barely there. I pulled on the least scandalous set I could find, which still looked like something straight out of a luxury lingerie runway show.
“This is fine. This is totally fine.” I caught sight of myself in the mirror and nearly choked. The pale-pink lace left very little to the imagination. “This is not fine. This is the opposite of fine. This is… this is…”
My mind helpfully supplied another passage.
Jason’s eyes darkened at the sight of her in delicate lace. “Beautiful,” he breathed, reaching for her…
“Stop it!” I grabbed the nearest clothes I could find—an oversized silk lounging set. “There. Perfect. Nothing says not interested in continuing our steamy makeout session like expensive shapeless silk, right?”
I caught my reflection again and groaned. Somehow, the silk just made everything worse, clinging in all the right—wrong?—places when I moved.
“Maybe I could fake food poisoning?” I suggested to my reflection. “Or suddenly develop a very convenient case of laryngitis? Or just… jump out the window?”
I glanced at the floor-to-ceiling windows. We were sixty floors up.
“Okay, maybe not the window.”
A gentle knock at the door nearly made me jump out of my skin.
I glanced at the clock and did a double take.
Seven thirty p.m.? That couldn’t be right.
Had I really spent three and a half hours alternating between pacing, panic-attacking, and replaying every heated moment in vivid detail?
The evidence was certainly there in my aching feet and the path I’d probably worn into the carpet.
The setting sun painted Manhattan’s skyline in deep golds and pinks, the same warm tones that had filled the library when Jason had pressed me into that sofa and…
“Mrs. Everett?” Mrs. Martinez’s voice called through the door, interrupting my thousandth replay of the afternoon’s events. “Gregory would like to know where you’d prefer dinner to be served this evening. The formal dining room or perhaps…” Was that amusement in her voice? “…the library?”
I made a sound somewhere between a squeak and a groan.
The library? Where just hours ago Jason had carried me like I weighed nothing?
Where his hands had done that thing that made me make sounds I didn’t even know I could make?
Where he’d promised tonight in that deep voice that still made my insides melt?
“Not the library!” I called back, my voice hitting a pitch that probably had dogs in the next borough covering their ears. “Definitely not the library! And um, actually, I’m still full from all that pizza earlier—which, wow, was that really like four hours ago?—so maybe we could skip?—”